Chapter 6-3 The End of Life

The end of life seems to be a very "taboo" topic.

The desire for eternal life is human instinct, and even the gods are no exception. In "The Journey to the West"《西游记》, Taishang Laojun's（太上老君）full-time job is to sweat in front of the alchemy furnace, continuously supplying the heavenly palace with carefully refined elixirs for immortality. The peaches of the Queen Mother are also the magical fruit of life: "Those that ripen once every 3,000 years will make people strong and light after eating; those that ripen once every 6,000 years will make people soar into the sky and live forever; those that ripen once every 9,000 years will make people live as long as the heaven and the earth, and as old as the sun and the moon." The Ginseng Fruit that Sun Wukong（孙悟空）stole on earth, "blooms once every 3,000 years, bears fruit once every 3,000 years, and takes another 3,000 years to mature. One bite extends one's lifespan." It is clear that the desire to extend life spans is the aspiration of all living beings, but life inevitably has an end that cannot be avoided.

In the natural span of life, for most people, this process is full of unknown and even mysteries. We don't know what will happen tomorrow, and we don't know which will come first, the sun or the disaster. Many times, even when we say goodbye to life, we are full of regrets, unwillingness and reluctance. If we have a huge fear of life and death, the experience of life will be greatly discounted.

Fearing death does not extend life; it often has the opposite effect. Whether there is an elixir of immortality like Taishang Laojun's remains unknown, but in history, no one has successfully "borrowed another 500 years from the heaven". Emperors throughout history who sought immortality through "elixirs", such as Qin Shi Huang（秦始皇）, Emperor Wu of Han（汉武帝）, and Emperor Tai-zong of Tang（唐太宗）, all failed to gain longevity, but instead took "death warrants" and handed in their lives in a hurry. All things in the world "live towards death". From birth, every life is constantly rushing towards "death".

Here is a confession from a Chinese TV drama about life and death::

"Death is actually just a return. It is the shore that all life will eventually reach, where all those missed and lost will be reunited.

 Life, like flowing water, sometimes rushes, sometimes dries up, but never stops, and this is the continuation of life."

If human birth is the beginning of life experience in this three-dimensional world, then death is undoubtedly the end of this "killing monsters and upgrading" game. Unfortunately, everyone has only one chance to experience life and death in this life, and will eventually face the final moment. When a person understands that life and death are so simple, his state of life experience will be completely different.

The "Diamond Sutra" states: "The past mind cannot be grasped, the present mind cannot be grasped, the future mind cannot be grasped." This is because the past, present, and future are all our perceptions of time on a macroscopic scale in the world. What happened before birth and what will happen after death are not directly related to us. Our fear of death and ignorance of the soul are the greatest obstacles to our understanding within this three-dimensional space. If we can understand the principle of "immortality of the soul", when a person reincarnates into other spaces, whether in the past or in the future, it only looks like an image of different projections in the higher-dimensional space. It's like putting an ant on one side of a cardboard and another on the other side. They may both be chasing their own food, but neither ant can sense the existence of the other. In the three-dimensional world, we can see everything at a glance.

Since it is difficult to describe the near-death experience at the "end of the play" in words, we have found a set of images that reveal the dying feelings of terminal cancer patients and their farewells with loved ones...

During the process of encountering death, the soul is in an "unstable state", either leaving or about to leave the body. Therefore, in almost all descriptions of near-death experiences, people feel that they have traveled into a higher dimension. What is comforting is that most descriptions of near-death experiences are infinitely beautiful. The scenes, colors and lights they see are incredibly pleasant, a supreme beauty that words cannot describe.

This is easy to understand: in one dimension, all you can draw are boring lines. In two dimensions, you can display beautiful images. Three dimensions are full of changes and are much more beautiful than two dimensions. In the fourth dimension, the scenes here must be the most beautiful that the world has never seen. Each dimension is infinitely more beautiful than the previous one. Christianity calls that place "Heaven", and Buddhism calls it "Pure Land".

In "Many Lives, Many Masters", the feeling of death is depicted as follows:

"I saw a beautiful light..."

"Now, I just feel peaceful."

"The soul here is very calm and peaceful, it's a wonderful feeling... beautiful, like the sunlight shining on you continuously. The light is so sublime! Everything comes from the light! Energy is gained from the light. The soul goes straight there, as if attracted by a magnetic force."

If, as described in the book, when the body completes its mission and the soul leaves the body and overlooks everything, the pain of the senses will no longer be there, replaced by the ultimate care of a beam of light. There, we get the most complete rest, absorb the purest energy, and all that remains is peace. Imagining this point seems to reduce many people's fear of death, hatred of disease and attachment to the body, thereby alleviating anxiety about age and the passage of time.